How's this for lateral thinking: A team of urban planners won a skyscraper design competition this week by proposing a giant inverted megastructure in the heart of New York City.

The New York Horizon project was awarded first place in the 2016 eVolo Skyscraper Competition, the annual event that recognizes visionary concepts for high-rise constructions. As conceived by architects Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu, the Horizon structure inverts the usual paradigm by digging into the bedrock of Manhattan and dropping Central Park 100 feet below street level.

The resulting "cliffs" around the sunken Central Park would actually be the forward-facing windows for underground office and apartments. By dropping the park and surrounding it with subterranean housing, the Horizon would create around 7 square miles of new residential and commercial real estate - about 80 times greater than the Empire State Building.

The Skyscraper Competition, held annually since 2006, received 489 applications in total this year. Three winners and 21 honorable mentions were selected by a panel of judges. Second place this year went to |
eVolo

It's all entirely conceptual, of course, and such an undertaking would require colossal infrastructure changes. But it's certainly a fascinating idea. By building down instead of up, the Horizon concept would flip the entire concept of "overlooking Central Park."

According to the plan, soil and rock removed from the existing Central Park would be relocated to building projects in other neighborhoods. Then the 1.3 square mile trench would be terraformed into an entirely new Central Park - only 100 feet lower. The cliff wall of windows surrounding the park would be made from highly reflective glass, creating a mirror illusion of infinite space.

eVolo, by the by, is a architecture and design journal whose objective is to "promote and discuss the most avant-garde ideas generated in schools and professional studios around the world." It's one of the coolest online destinations to click around, if you're at all into this sort of thing.